Republicans in the Arizona state legislature, not content to twiddle their thumbs whilst SB 1070 navigates the courts, have introduced new legislation challenging birthright citizenship:
The aim is “to trigger … a Supreme Court review of the phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ in the 14th amendment,” said Rep. John Kavanagh, one on the backers of the legislation.
It ultimately seeks “to deny citizenship to any child born of parents who are not citizens of the United States, be they illegal aliens, or foreigners on business or for tourist purposes,” he added.
A total of four proposals were introduced, two in the state House of Representatives and two in the Senate, where Republicans have a majority.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Joe and Steven Seagal took to the streets with deputies and a posse to round up the illegals:
In Phoenix, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday kicked off a sweep to crack down on illegal immigration.
Aside from his deputies, Arpaio also relied on volunteer members of a newly formed Illegal Immigration Enforcement Posse, who took to the streets in a two-day countywide operation targeting drop houses, drug activity and human smuggling, said sheriff’s spokesman Sergeant Jesse Spurgin.
Action flick star Steven Seagal is a member of the sheriff’s posse, and he took part in the operation, Spurgin said. Twenty-two suspected illegal immigrants had been arrested by late Thursday, he said.
The legislation Arizona lawmakers introduced on Thursday is part of a coordinated drive by Republican legislators in several U.S. states that seeks to deny birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.
Truly, the inmates have taken control of the asylum.
These are the same people who want to cut 280,000 thousand poor people off the Medicaid rolls in Arizona, who want to slash education funding from K-12 and public universities – all because it’s impossible to pass any tax hikes beyond a measly, temporary jump in the state sales tax. Jan Brewer wants to create a state college system to run alongside the University system to offer a lower cost alternative (along the lines of California’s parallel institutions). But this is no fix to an immediate budget crisis! This is a long-term plan that certainly may have its merits – I’m skeptical given it comes from the governor’s desk – but it’s no short-term fix. If anything, it’s a disguised attempt to pull more funds from the existing higher education system and funnel them into a theoretical state college system. I have my doubts those funds will end up where they say they will. This is not the first time the legislature has attempted to rob the coffers of other state programs – attempts that have been rejected time and again by Arizona voters. The same voters who, inexplicably, keep electing these people to office.
But hey, at least Arizona students and faculty will be able to carry guns on campus.
What bloody madness.
I think Arizona is a wonderful state. It’s sunny, diverse, has quirky artsy towns like Gerome Jerome (I always misspell that) and Bisbee, and the super-quirky Arcosanti. We’ve got legal medical marijuana and soon will have a dispensary system. The state is actually quite a lot more diverse than reports like these would have you believe – bordering purple, and trending that direction (which may explain the reactionary nature of its current government). But these bills that keep coming up just get crazier and crazier. Nothing has done more to push me leftward politically than watching the consequences of these red-meat politicians and their paranoid, revanchist legislation.
Cacti
The State is diverse, but the white Republican establishment and base are doing their best to eradicate that.
Arizona is actively trying to purge the Latino population. It’s far from a wonderful state. It’s the Alabama of the 21st century.
cathyx
Dare I say it? You almost sound like a liberal.
Poopyman
As it ever was. And yet this flavor of politics keeps coming back time and again, only to push itself off the right side of the stage once it has alienated enough people.
This version should have peaked by now though, and Arpaio should be in prison and Brewer an historical footnote. That they’re still around worries me.
pika
E.D., yes–that is the correct, accurate word: revanchism is the main guiding thread of so much of right-wing theory and practice.
shortstop
Jerome is so quirky that they spell it with a J.
Your last paragraph is telling in its meagerness. A couple of “quirky, artsy” towns and legal weed are a pretty limp counter to everything that’s wrong with Arizona. At this point, about all the state hasn’t managed to fuck up (much) is its incredible geological beauty and other nature-related stuff, which didn’t even make your list.
BC
Welcome to the DFH world, ED. You won’t be able to go home again, the right is just going to keep going until (hopefully) they spiral out of control. Problem is, they will be able to do a lot of damage during that spiral.
John PM
How long until Makato_Chan (or whatever his/her name is) comes along to say that this situation is actually all ED’s fault and that ED is a posuer unless he burns an effigy of Rand Paul?
Scott
@Cacti: I suspect every red-trending-purple state is about to go full-Arizona. I can almost guarantee you the Texas Lege is all set to go crazy this session. No one knows just how large our budget hole is, and the economy may be preparing to go into freefall, but damn, the Lege is seriously worried about implementing voter roadblocks, attacking non-whites, and helping Rick Perry ban calculus from public schools.
geg6
I don’t know how anyone lives there. I wouldn’t, not for anything. AZ has become like TX to me. A place I will never again step foot in, let alone live in.
My poor godparents, very nice people originally from Western PA who moved to Binghamton, NY and now to AZ in semi-retirement, are appalled. But too entrenched financially and by proximity to family (a son in San Diego and daughter in Santa Fe) to get out.
And now the Palins are moving in, en masse. Fuck that place.
Michael D.
@cathyx:
It happens here.
matoko_chan
@BC: its just a headfake.
EDK knows the conservitards have to scrape the teahadists off their shoes or never win another general election.
Let him say the fetus=slave eumene is a bullshit position and i’ll give him another shot to prove himself.
until then…..
/yawn
Punchy
Long ago, I joked that eventually Repubs would be all for putting guns in day cares. I joked, total snark.
Today, I read this. At least 3 year olds will learn how to shoot each other, and maybe learn CPR, learn the fine art of lying to police, and perhaps learn how to attend funerals.
walt
Arizona is not purple, it’s red verging on deep red. The deracinated elderly who decamp here, whose demographic is the one overwhelming political fact of life here, will not vote for higher taxes. The so-called creative class is larval and the burgeoning Hispanic minority vote at a third of the efficacy of Anglos. All this takes a bad situation and compounds it into something worse. Arizona is now politically insane.
We won’t invest, we won’t tax ourselves, we mock education, science, and the arts, we believe demonstrably stupid things like supply side theory and Intelligent Design, and we believe the built environment should be cheap, horizontal, and ugly. We think government wastes money and private enterprise creates it. We are beyond redemption, repair and hope.
Omnes Omnibus
@John PM: Four comments.
mistermix
@John PM: Two minutes, to answer your question.
Ash Can
I’d be highly suspect of the educational merits of any state college system set up by Jan Brewer’s administration. Imagining the curricula of such schools gives me acid reflux.
mistermix
@matoko_chan: If they do wipe the teatards off their shoes, they will not win another election. That’s the dilemma.
tom p
I can’t wait till they are evicted from the state house for non-payment of the rent.
Jeff Spender
Ah, I love the smell of insanity in the morning.
Smells like…victory.
Also, too, anyone want to raise funds to terraform Mars and live there? I mean, it didn’t work out so well for the people in The Martian Chronicles, but GOD DAMN I know I can do better.
Famous last words.
Zifnab
At what point do we get to refer to Arizona as a “failed state”? I mean, sending what amounts to a pack of paramilitary brown-shirts door-to-door through Phoenix so you can demand “papers”, round an ethnic group up, and throw them in camps is about as fascist as you’re likely to get this side of France.
The Moar You Know
I met Steven Seagal at a NAMM show back in the late 1990s. Biggest asshole I’ve ever met in my life. Also one of the worst guitar players I’ve ever had the misfortune of having to show an instrument to.
He also uses spray tanner. I had to wipe the instruments down after he “played” them.
Fuck him. And fuck Arapio, too.
shortstop
OT: Our downstairs neighbors, classic examples of “Don’t retire early without a plan to keep yourself busy in a meaningful way” syndrome, moved to Chicago from the whitest part of Memphis because they thought it would be an exciting place to spend their golden years. Well, it is. Unfortunately for them, easy access to the arts, museums, sports and restaurants has not made up for the horror of having to share space with “urban” types. They keep calling the cops every time there’s a brown person in the parking lot behind our building, which is pretty damned often given that this is one of the few truly integrated neighborhoods in Chicago.
Finally, they told me that they’re building a house in Preston, what you might call another kind of “artsy” Arizona town. The looks on their faces when I nodded approvingly and told them that I thought they’d feel much more at home in Arizona in general and Preston in particular were priceless. They knew I was snarking but they couldn’t quite put their finger on why.
Best part was when I asked them their thoughts on the battle over the lower Colorado and the intensifying water wars — she chirped, “Oh, we’re not worried! We’re landscaping with desert plants!”
I would really love to be the fly on the wall down the road…
fasteddie9318
Sorry to hijack, but CNN has a satellite feed up in Cairo showing armed clashes between protesters and army. An army personnel carrier was just hit with what looked like a Molotov.
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus:
@mistermix:
It’s John PM’s own fault. He just had to go look in the mirror and say her name three times…
Jeff Spender
@shortstop:
This is one of those stories that you know is just going to have a funny ending, isn’t it?
shortstop
@The Moar You Know: It’s entertaining, though, to find out guys like Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal apparently think they were making documentaries back in the day.
Egypt Steve
Well — if they are going to argue that the children of undocumented aliens are not subject to the “jurisdiction” of the states that they live in, then what is their legal authority to arrest them, tax them, or even deport them?
Jules
And there is no way that this might not end well…coughBrisenia Florescough…
E.D. Kain
@Ash Can: Exactly. Highly, highly suspect.
Cacti
@The Moar You Know:
My favorite apocryphal Steven Seagal story is the one where he got choked out by “Judo” Gene LeBell on the set of Under Siege and crapped his pants.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Scott:
Here in Misery, a purple-trending-red state, the wingnuts that control both houses will do everything in their power to out Texas Texas in the race to be the winner of the National Laboratory for Bad Gubmint sweapstakes.
E.D. Kain
@shortstop: Yeah I meant to mention the natural beauty as well. And make no mistake they’ll keep going after it as well.
shortstop
And, you know, there’s a mini-trend toward remembering Barry Goldwater as being less insane than people thought he was at the time. Certainly he looks like a mild-mannered hippie next to today’s GOP. But let’s not forget that Arizona is the way it is in part because Barry and Del Webb set out to systematically turn it blood red by building the kind of retirement housing that attracts the most insular, tradition-bound, xenophobic, “I got mine” crowd of old white folks possible. We are seeing the results of that long-term planning today.
John PM
@Ash Can: #24
I only said it once! Wait, what’s that sound…
(Goes into darkened basement)
Poopyman
@fasteddie9318:
5:03 pm – Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh reports some extraordinary events in Alexandria: Protesters, who often outnumber police, have “arrested” police officers and beat some of them with their own batons. Police without their gear are left alone, those in their gear are confronted. Protesters are also setting security vehicles on fire.
Also too:
E.D. Kain
@shortstop: truth, these days, is way stranger than fiction.
dmsilev
@shortstop: Oy. I can imagine just how much the local cops appreciate all of those calls.
dms
lovable liberal
Steven Seagal has never been able to act well enough to cover the fact that he’s a completely self-centered asshole. It shines right through. No surprise to learn that he’s a wingnut vigilante.
Alex S.
@Poopyman:
Maybe the new dynasty will come from Alexandria.
(I’m fascinated by Ancient Egypt, just move along…)
joe from Lowell
If illegal immigrants* aren’t subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, then how can the sheriff arrest them and the courts try them?
*illegal immigrants is a value-loaded phrase the right wing likes to use in place of the more accurate, neutral term “Paperwork-Deprived America-Joiners.”
cleek
@Zifnab:
meh.
let states do what they want.
Bill ORLY
I love my state. I just loath about 80% of its population.
Gravenstone
Just thought I’d mention “280,000 thousand” = 280 million. One or the other notation for thousand should go.
AZ was a nice enough place when I briefly went to college there early 80’s. And we have good family friends who winter out their due to their health. It’s a shame, the mess large swathes of it appear to have become.
shortstop
@John PM: You might be all right going to investigate a sound in a darkened basement, but under no circumstances should you have illicit sex in the woods. That’s just signing your own death warrant.
@dmsilev: Yes, because the budget crisis that has taken so many cops off our city streets doesn’t mean that they’re busier trying to fight actual crime. They have plenty of time to investigate people who are peacefully (and silently) walking around while intoxicated and of Mexican heritage. Or walking their dogs while African American.
rachel
@lovable liberal: Steven Seagal can’t act and never was interested in learning to, which is why he’s never played a character who wasn’t an ass. My favorite Seagal movie? Executive Decision.
fasteddie9318
I need to get CNN-I. Watching this is unbearable with this moron Kyra Phillips constantly bleating “BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH TERRORISTISES!?”
Allan
Townhall’s shilling for Rand Paul and his plan to introduce the National Right to Work Act. Child labor, here we come!
jcricket
Sorry, but this makes me happy.
I wish America could be a reasonable nation, and that Democrats were better at articulating the affirmative case for voting “D”. But we’re weak-kneed apologists who desperately crave the approval of the Village and think that there’s some way we can twist our policies into a pretzel and win the votes of everyone!
So given that I do happen to think the mildly centrist policies of the current Democratic party are the only thing standing between us and permanent banana republic/economic crisis – I’m happy the Republicans are embracing the crazy.
When Republicans embraced the anti-Latino policies (under the guise of immigration reform/Prop 187) in California it doomed them to permanent minority status. I can only hope it does the same in sun-belt states, Texas, etc.
It’s the only chance America has.
New Yorker
I’m glad I’ve seen the Grand Canyon already, because I really don’t want to spend another cent of my money in the state until the craziness dies down.
It’s a shame, because the northern half of the state is so beautiful. I honestly feel like Flagstaff might have the best climate for my tastes in the entire country: 4 distinct seasons, but without brutally hot and/or humid summers or bitterly cold winters.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Everytime My wife hears someone talk about Arizona, she just rails on how huge of an economic and resource sink the whole state is. A lot of freight companies don’t charge for fuel moving goods out of Arizona, because otherwise their trucks would be stranded there.
Taking a trip down there last month and seeing all the “where’s the birth certificate” billboards just solidified her distain.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
“Bloody madness” is sadly right, unfortunately.
Crashman
@rachel: That’s because he dies like five minutes in, right?
rachel
@Crashman: Yes! It cheered me up immensely.
ericblair
Used to live in southern AZ over a decade ago, when our congresscritter was an out gay Republican. Tucson seemed to be fairly sane although the local government truly never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and it was Maricopa county (Phoenix) and to-hell-and-gone in the desert where the crazies were.
So what now, has the insanity spread or is it a matter of increased crazy concentration in Maricopa cty and the sticks?
JGabriel
@Zifnab:
Or this side of 1945, speaking more temporally.
.
Culture of Truth
How soon before Arizona authorities cut off access to the Internet?
Kryptik
I’m so goddamn sick of the state of guns in this country, because it feels like I’m literally surrounded by people who think we’ll never be safe unless we’re all packing openly in every public place ever.
I tried to argue with someone using my logic of ‘the more guns pulled out during an attack, the harder it becomes to identify potential murderer and potential victim’, and brought up the shootings in Arizona and Joe Zamudio. You know, the guy who nearly shot someone that picked up Loughner’s gun to train it on him, and was only saved by someone shouting that it wasn’t him, and his sense to keep the gun stashed back.
THe retort was ‘I hurt myself with my axe chopping wood, should I never chop wood again?’
It’s impossible to win these battles anymore it feels like. Everywhere, it’s ‘more guns, more fire, more NOW!’ and it’s impossible to stop anymore. And it fucking scares me.
Citizen_X
Excuse me, Steven Fucking Seagal shows up on these raids? It’s bad enough we have to put up with this no-knock-raids bullshit, but now they’re bringing along rich tourists? Fuck that shit.
I’m sorry, but if they’re raiding my house and I feel like going out in a blaze of glory, and Seagal or some other asshole is along for the ride, I’m blowing the whole clip on them as my final act.
Was that too uncivil?
PurpleGirl
@shortstop: Segal still thinks he’s making documentaries (or least a reality show).
The Moar You Know
@jcricket: Hope like hell that you’re wrong about it being “the only chance that America has” because I can guarantee you that Latinos are not going to vote as a block for the Democratic Party forever. The Latinos I know – and having grown up only 30 miles from the border here in San Diego I know a lot of them – are a natural GOP constituency. Religious, heavy emphasis on tradition and big families, modest, and very much into the idea of authoritarian rule.
If the GOP ever pulls its collective head out of its ass and stops using Latinos as punching bags, you can kiss that demographic goodbye within a few years. Not a generation, but five, ten years max.
So I hope fervently that the Democrats have a backup plan that does not involve “more Mexicans will save us” because that plan is built on some pretty fucking shaky ground.
Elvis Elvisberg
Conservatism is dead in this country. There’s a right wing movement with no policy beliefs, just a series of resentments. Anyone who is a liberal or a conservative or has any views on policy whatsoever identify as a Republican.
You probably haven’t moved left at all.
Matt
Anybody else find it amusing that, despite Arpaio’s constant assertions, two days of “posse” action only managed to turn up 22 “illegal aliens”? From the way ol’ Joe whines about it, they should have been able to round up a couple thousand…
Stefan
You might be all right going to investigate a sound in a darkened basement, but under no circumstances should you have illicit sex in the woods. That’s just signing your own death warrant.
Can I at least still have licit sex in the woods?
Kryptik
@The Moar You Know:
A lot of Black communities are the same way, but the GOP has still pursued stupid and mostly racist policy that has kept blacks as a whole voting about 80-90% Democratic.
You’re overestimating the GOP’s ability to actually see that opportunity over their concept of ‘brown = Not Really American = Not Worth the Vote’
gwangung
This is pretty much true for ALL minority groups: black, Asian and Hispanic. Asians were even trending Republican 15 years ago.
Republicans have quite happily pissed on anything brown and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
And, dude…even if that did…that would be a big improvement, ya know?
Culture of Truth
Some comic actor, I think it was Tom Hanks, was on Saturday Night Live, and clearly joking, says to Lorne Michaels, “wow, I must be the biggest asshole ever to host the show!!”
and Lorne Michaels says, “No, that would be Steven Segal.”
Villago Delenda Est
I recall Lorne Michaels saying that Segal would never again be invited to host Saturday Night Live because he was such an asshole.
OK, refreshing fizzy beverage being sent through the ‘tubes to CoT…
Zifnab
@cleek:
Easy for you to say. You don’t live in Texas.
scav
@Matt: numeracy, literacy, all that elitist stuff gets in the way of what they know must be true.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Moar You Know:
The problem the GOP faces is that they made a conscious decision 45 years ago, or rather Richard Nixon did, to become the party of overt racism, with the “Southern Strategy”. “Winning” became more important than political principles at that time, and they’ve gone further down the rabbit hole ever since. Short term mentality. Contrast with LBJ who knew, and said, that pushing through the Civil Rights Act would lose the South to the Democrats for a generation, at least, and did not care, because he thought it was the right thing to do.
shortstop
@Stefan: There may be no such thing as licit sex in the woods. The third baseman and I enjoy the outdoor life in all its aspects. But even now I can’t quite relax in the act of lerve while camping/hiking/sneaking away from acquaintances’ rural homes, because part of me is convinced that an axe-bearing maniac is going to rush out from beyond the next tree.
Cris
70 comments is far too long before somebody praises the post title. Joie!
JGabriel
@The Moar You Know:
Not gonna happen anytime soon. As soon as Republicans stop using race, ethnicity, and skin color to rile up voters, the conversation will turn to class. And the GOP really doesn’t want to go there.
.
Elvis Elvisberg
@Culture of Truth: It was Nicholas Cage.
JGabriel
@shortstop:
Spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania, haina?
.
PurpleGirl
I was under the impression that children of “foreigners on business or for tourist purposes” were currently ineligible to become citizens by birth. If this is a wrong impression or a problem, can we have numbers please?
RP
Right. A sane and non-racist GOP would be a great thing for this country, even if it meant that they got a big share of the Latino vote and hurt the Dems.
Maude
The posse has to be sworn in don’t they? That would make them part of law enforcement.
How did they acertain that the people were illegal? I know, such piddling little nits to ask about.
Silver Owl
A few more months of all the crazy shit from conservatives and soon the biggest freaking joke to all of mankind will be both white conservative men women.
Culture of Truth
@Elvis Elvisberg: Thanks. That’s even funnier
rachel
@PurpleGirl: I think you have a wrong impression there.
Villago Delenda Est
@Maude:
If their skin isn’t white (or orange) it’s self evident, now, isn’t it?
piratedan
well you can’t forget the financial connection here….Sheriff Joe goes out and “rounds up” illegal immigrants and naturally he gets them at home, so the businesses that employ them don’t have to suffer any undue embarassment. He gets enough so that they can’t be quartered with the feds so they have to be stashed at…. wait for it… the private prison system. Guess who’s top staffers lobby for the private prison system? I’d give ya three guesses but you only need one, or maybe two….. her highness herself Govenor Jan Brewer. We have here a report that earmarks 78m of the stimulus money to “Public Safety” projects..
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/only_on_fox/show-me-the-stimulus-1-20-2011
So instead of saving people on the transplant list with 1.5 million of that money, Governor Cactus Barbie drops about 50m on people that are in bed with folks on her staff. Coinkidink?
Also we need to close the circle here, who pulls the strings on Cactus Barbie? Why its State Senator Russell Pearce of SB 1070 fame. Guess who is a major finacial backer of Mr. Pearce, why it is coincidentally the same folks that work with Cactus Barbie, the private prison industry. Guess who pays the private prisons the money for holding those illegals dumped intpo the system (which is so overworked that they’ve now declared a Judicial Emergency in the state to deal with the overload in Immigration cases
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/27/939060/-Judicial-emergency-declared-in-Arizona.
We’ll have change here in Arizona eventually, the problem is that we have to wait for the federal lawsuits levied against Sheriff Joe to finally meander their way through the courts and that may start the chain reaction of rats leaving the sinking ship…for me that day can’t get here soon enough.
jibeaux
@PurpleGirl:
I think if you have a birth certificate for American soil, that’ll do you for citizenship. That’s, after all, what most of us have, it’s not like we pass out Certificates of Citizenship. That said, don’t think it’s a big problem and definitely isn’t foremost on their minds. Only thing I’ve ever heard about it is that apparently sometimes wealthy Asians, such as South Koreans and maybe Chinese by this point, sometimes come here to give birth so that when their kids are grown they can easily come to the U.S. for college, graduate school, or work. Sort of a can’t-do-you-any-harm investment in the kid’s future. That said, I don’t get the idea this is exactly in our top one thousand national problems.
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
Borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring.
JGabriel
PurpleGirl:
As far as I know, they are eligible. It simply doesn’t come up very often, because people here on business or as tourists typically leave after short visits and raise their children as citizens in their home countries.
Diplomats children who are born here are not eligible to become citizens because they have diplomatic immunity. That’s the reason for the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause — to close off a citizenship loophole to diplomats and their kids. Also some non-tax paying Indians, but that was overridden by later legislation.
.
Zifnab
@The Moar You Know:
That would imply they might actually have to start catering to their constituencies. In order to win the Hispanic vote, they’ll have to do more than just not say anything mean about hispanics. They’ll actually have to start campaigning in hispanic neighborhoods, running Spanish language commercials, and genuinely courting hispanic community needs. Any attempt to engage in that kind of courtship sets off a firestorm on the white right flank.
j low
I love AZ. -Tuscon- Tucson is one of my favorite cities, and the Hotel Congress is a musician’s weekend getaway paradise. Great historic hotel with tv free rooms. There is a very good quality restaurant, a great music venue, and a dive bar all under one roof. AZ is on the front lines of white people minority status, so before you throw stones think about what your state is going to act like when it gets that far.
Stefan
I was under the impression that children of “foreigners on business or for tourist purposes” were currently ineligible to become citizens by birth.
No, that’s wrong. Any childen born here (excluding the children of active-duty foreign diplomats) become American citizens at the moment of their birth, no matter if their mother only happens to be in the US on a business or tourist trip (though then again, not that many nine month pregnant women who are not Sarah Palin take business or tourist trips in the first place).
burnspbesq
@Zifnab:
Not yet. It doesn’t have its own hyperinflationary currency, or pirates who prey on ships headed for the Port of Long Beach.
But it’s getting closer every day. Soon we’ll learn that the tunnels originally built for drug-smuggling are being used to deliver AKs and RPGs to Sheriff Joe’s private army.
E.D. Kain
@Cris: Thanks!
PurpleGirl
To the people responding to my comment: Thanks. I didn’t think it was a problem, certainly not something needing this type of action.
grandpajohn
Well as someone who lives in SC, I have to say thanks to Arizona for taking the spotlight away from us as the most insane ,stupidest fucking state in the country
burnspbesq
@John PM:
Been nice knowin’ ya. This is surely not going to end well.
shortstop
@PurpleGirl: On the other hand, you haven’t addressed the supergigantico problem of Muslim women coming here to have their terror babies, who will wreak total destruction on us in 18-22 years. So there’s that.
Zach
Here’s a hypothetical in the event that this law passes: Non-birthright British citizenship requires that one parent be a birthright citizen; thus, if a child of two non-birthright British citizens is born in the United States, they are a citizen of nowhere.
jwb
@BC: I’m looking forward to the Rapture myself, so that all the crazies can go off and leave us liberals to this godforsaken hell we call earth. Without the crazy, I think it will be a very pleasant place indeed.
JMC in the ATL
I love visiting Tucson and the surrounding areas. It truly is unfortunate that Pima County can’t turn back time and join New Mexico.
Culture of Truth
The way the GOP goes on and on about the debt you’d think they’d be happy so many foreigners want to come here and help pay it off.
Xenos
@Zach:
Why would she not be a citizen of the UK? Granted, it may require registration with the UK government, but that could be done in adulthood.
This sort of thing is dealt with in the European jus sanguinis system. Generally, if a stateless person is born in a country they can qualify for a permanent residency status, and can’t be deported. Increasingly that child can qualify for citizenship once it can be proven that they would be otherwise stateless.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@The Moar You Know:
The same could be said for black folks, and I can flat out guarantee it’ll be generations before the African American vote goes to Republicans again.
These people are too stupid and too hateful to moderate their rhetoric; you can pretty much bet they’ll alienate any non-white voters for the forseeable future.
EDIT: I see Kryptik beat me to it– but it still applies. I’m generally hesitant to bet on outright stupidity, but movement conservatives are really, really good at it.
Kryptik
@Xenos:
Still, I believe this is a valid issue that simply does not get addressed by the GOP’s mad dash to ‘stick it to the illegals’. The potential to create stateless children through this has been one of my big worries about it all. Especially with the vague wording usually offered that rarely ever specifies that ONLY ‘illegal immigrants’ get the shaft. This, combined with their rather creative attempts to define what ‘natural born citizen’ actually means makes me pretty convinced that they simply don’t care. I mean, they still pretty much want to make it ‘Unless you were born to citizens (and even then, only the RIGHT kind of citizen) AND born in the US, you can’t ever be considered the RIGHT kind of citizen’.
shortstop
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
It’s tempting to call it stupidity, but a strategy that relies on dividing and conquering has to make some choices about which voters to lose in the process. As JGabriel points out above, once the GOP stops talking about race and ethnicity, it allows a conversation about class to take its place — and that would be an unmitigated disaster for Republican fortunes.
jcricket
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Believe me – I wish Democrats did a better job at articulating why people should vote for us – but we don’t.
So if all we have is that the GOP is racist and xenophobic and homophobic and sexist, I’ll take it.
If the GOP ever reforms those elements and we start merely having an honest conversation about taxation and service levels, and this results in a less racially-aligned political system – I’d be all for it. There’s no way that wouldn’t be better (we might resemble the British or French or German political systems, where the conservative parties aren’t fucknuts).
Xenos
@Kryptik: Don’t think I am not in agreement with you. I was just pointing out that most countries work out these issues as a matter of ‘blood’, and only recently are adapting some of the American principles of rights emerging from the soil, as it were.
I think it was DanGre’s point that the 14th Amendment language was part of a political compromise that settled the rights of former slaves AND former rebels. At the point the 14th Amendment gets undone that compromise is undone, as far as I can tell. And if that compromise is undone that we are in for all sorts of inconvenience trying to sort the ensuing mess out.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
There isn’t much tea in this teapot. Just as a couple of examples, Sheriff Joe has been doing his theatrical “crackdowns” for years, mostly with nobody paying a lot of attention until the GOP turned border control into a dogwhistle issue. Then the cameras rushed over to shoot footage of his schtick.
Another example, the Arizona legislature has been collared by a Mormon-Republican voting bloc in this state since WWII. There is nothing new about it. The general population is, as described somewhere above, mostly purplish and quite a but apolitical. Arizona is a state of migrants, from south of the border, and from north of the border. People just keep coming here in droves. Most of them come here for family or economic reasons, and they are too busy trying to steer their own lives and jobs to pay a lot of attention to the sad politics of the Arizona legislature. The entrenched GOP just sits tight and does whatever it wants, until they really fuck something up and people have to stop and pay attention.
We do pretty well when a Dem governor can ride alongside the Mor(m)ons and keep them in check. But when Janet Napolitano left to become a DC cheese and Jan Brewer took over, there was nothing to slow the Mor(m)ons down and keep things on some kind of middle path.
Despite the moron government and the constant influx of out of staters and the hot summers and Cindy McCain’s firehose of beer …. we manage to get by with a relatively recession-resistant economy (unemployment tends lower than the national average most of the time).
One thing all Arizonans have in common is a boner for jackasses from other parts of the country coming in here and telling us what they think is going on here.
Elie
@walt:
That demographic is decreasing in prevalence every year. It may be getting redder in the short term but I wouldnt hang my hat on that for the future…
Zach
@Xenos: You aren’t a British citizen by default unless one of your parents is a citizen by something other than blood. There are exceptions made for stateless folks and whatnot, but not everyone has access to immigration lawyers or whatever. I assume there are other countries without birthright citizenship, so this probably wouldn’t be unprecedented, but it’d be a headache. Of course Rand would probably be fine if the law were limited in scope to residents of the Western Hemisphere south of the United States which would avoid most problems other than institutionalized bigotry.
pseudonymous in nc
Also “children of occupying forces”, so if Soviet Canuckistan were to invade, the occupying army’s kids wouldn’t be Americans. Wong Kim Ark is pretty clear on which exceptions formed part of the jurisdictional precedent.
Roger Moore
@Stefan:
AFAIK, that’s not 100% correct. There are a couple of other (mostly theoretical) limitations, notably the children of enemies (either occupiers or POWs) who are born on US soil during wartime. AFAIK, there are also residency requirements, so a child born on US soil needs to live here for some minimum time before their majority to be able to claim citizenship. I’m not certain about the latter, though I know from family history that there are rules like that for foreign born children of US citizens.
A Midnight Marauder At Balloon-Juice
@j low:
As though that is somehow a justification for rampant xenophobia and outright bigotry? Like no other states have dealt with integrating minorities into their communities without resorting to attempts to change the definition of an American citizen in the fucking Constitution?
j low
@A Midnight Marauder At Balloon-Juice: No it doesn’t you freaking idiot. But take a minute to think about what the xenophobes in your state are going to act like when your state nears brown/black majority status and how they are going to act before you get on your high horse about what a progressive paradise you live in compared to Arizona. For fucks sake.
Irony Abounds
Having lived in Arizona for over 46 years, I can honestly say that if earning a living wasn’t still a priority I would be out of here in a NY minute. However “purple” it may have become, the state is run by ignorant neanderthals whose love of guns and Jesus is only exceeded by their hatred of browns, liberals and public education. For balance, I can say that the more liberal Tucson also has huge problems because the Tucson and Pima County governments are among the worst run in the nation (prime example being the squandering millions of dollars on the Rio Nuevo project with absolutely nothing to show for it). Moreover, Tucson has literally nothing that attracts the post-university pre-retirement crowd, so ours sons and daughters can’t wait to get out of town after college.
It is a pathetic state in which to live.
Midnight Marauder
@j low:
For starters, no one said anything about a “progressive paradise,” so that is just a thing you made up to argue against. Secondly, I just think it’s a tad absurd to mount a pseudo-defense of the events going on in Arizona right now by saying “Oh yeah, well wait until you folks are in the same position and see how you respond!”
Maybe it should be taken into consideration that Arizona brought the vast majority of its ills on itself. Maybe it should be taken into consideration that Arizona has been a hotbed of rampant bigotry and xenophobia (the likes of which the country has not seen in quite some time) for a sustained and prolonged period of time now. You want to talk about how other states are going to act when they face a similar dynamic as Arizona without taking into account that those others states don’t seem to be headed towards a destined collision course with becoming a failed state like Arizona.
I get it, lots of states have lots of problems, and they should all be judged accordingly. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend like Arizona gets off the hook for becoming a fucking cesspool of ignorance and hate just because some other state could possible experience the same thing at an unknown time in the future.
Why don’t you bring that argument back when it legitimately reflects what’s happening in a state that is not Arizona?
Roger Moore
@j low:
Living in a state (California) that no longer has a majority, I can assure you that Arizona is far crazier now than we ever were. That’s not to deny that we have our share of bigots and race baiters, but somehow they never got the same degree of control over the state that they do in Arizona right now.
IrishGirl
The sickest and poorest will balance the budget in Arizona and I’m just sick about it.
Like all the other states, AZ has a mix of people. There are decent people who have little to no influence (like myself). There are a lot of ignorant people who don’t know enough to vote in the long term interests of the state (and ultimately themselves)–note how the people had the option of funding medicaid through a ballot initiative last year but they didn’t support (for details see my blog). And then there are the crazy-ass xenophobic bigoted a-holes (who live everywhere but gravitate wherever they see opportunities for chaos and ugliness, the Flores murder case is the perfect example of this).
Arizona is getting a lot of attention now because of several factors. It had been traditionally less welcome of anyone not “white”, true. But it is at the forefront of the border problems with Mexico (not that CA, TX and NM aren’t as well, but CA is distracted by their massive deficit, TX has a detente of sorts because of the number of towns right on the border, constant legitimate traffic back and forth, and more hispanics in positions of power within the state, and NM has been in such bad shape for so long, they just don’t give a shit). AZ has very little legitimate day-to-day business travel. The state of AZ has very little population outside of Tucson, Phoenix and Flagstaff. AZ has few Hispanics within the State Govt structure. And the disparity in wealth in AZ is out of control and getting worse with the recent recession.
(note none of this excuses AZ it only explains)
j low
@Midnight Marauder: I would love to argue the reasons why your response to my -comment- first comment was unreasonable, but I’m too cranky (Clearly. Sorry about the hot headed response) and it’s too late in the day on Friday yet not late enough for me to actually be having a beer.
j low
@Roger Moore: I had no idea that California was a white minority state. In fact I think it isn’t (unless is changed very recently). A quick google search says it’s the most minority state but still 57% white. CA is lucky to be HUGE and while it has a significant population of cranky old white people (my Grandfather was one of those while he was alive) it also has millions to balance that out. Because AZ is a much smaller state the COWP’s have a much more dramatic effect on state politics.
mclaren
None of this matters. Arizona is a roasting desert. And as global warming cranks up the heat to a nice even year-round 140 degrees Farenheit, the state will slowly but surely empty out.
The entire American southwest will gradually depopulate as global warming does its blast furnace work. Arizona’s doomed. Forget about it. In another 30 years, the only living things in Arizona will be horned toads.